BPS

BPS

BPS: the rate of transfer of data connections and download speeds.

BPS is the base measurement unit of data transfer speeds. It stands for “bits per second.” It is the first of the three most prevalent speeds of data transfer: bits per second, kilobits per second (kbps), and megabits per second (mbps).

When the internet was still young, bps was the predominant measurement because of the slow speeds present in the early stages.

As time has gone on, however, we have cycled through kbps as the main speed, and into mbps which is where we are now. There are some internet connections that exceed mbps, and reach gbps- gigabits per second (1,000,000,000 bps).

Once again it is very important to remember to distinguish bps (bits per second) from Bps (bytes per second), as telling somebody your connection speed is 800 Bps instead of bps can cause a major miscommunication as they may think your computer is running at 6400 bps.

Bps should only be used when dealing with the speed of storage transfers within the HDD, as it is already measured in bytes rather than bits. It is for this reason many people make the distinction by labeling bytes in their abbreviated forms separated by a slash- i.e. MB/s or GB/s.

Bps is the foundation for measuring connection rates, and is present in some way in many aspects of computer tech.